1. Field of the Invention
The embodiments disclosed in this application generally relate to Internet advertising and more specifically to integration of XML syndication content into Internet advertising units.
2. Background of the Invention
Extensible Mark-up Language or XML is a web standard language used to describe and share various types of data by using tags to define the data layout. It is very similar to Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), but unlike HTML it allows designers to create their own customized tags, enabling the definition, transmission, validation, and interpretation of data between applications and between organizations. Several families of XML-based formats are routinely used by webmasters to create syndicated content (e.g., news headlines, summaries of specific information, audio files, video files, etc.) for distribution on the Internet. Examples of these families of XML syndication formats are various versions of RSS and Atom. Of the two families, RSS is the most widely used because of its simplicity for developers.
Typically, syndicated content is delivered in the form of syndication feeds that are subscribed to directly by users with aggregating services or feed readers, which combine the contents of multiple web content feeds for display on a single screen or a series of screens. Depending on the method used, subscription is done by manually entering the URL of a feed, by clicking a link in a web browser or by various other methods. Newer versions of many popular web browsers tend to include built-in feed reader features, thus negating the need for a user to subscribe to an aggregating service or use other feed readers.
While the majority of XML syndication feeds currently contain news headlines or breaking information, the long term uses of XML syndication feeds are more diverse. For example, the feeds can be used by Internet advertising companies to interactively deliver Internet content to consumers, to seamlessly integrate dynamically updated content with Internet advertising media, and to deliver dynamically updated data (e.g., statistics, results, etc.) to consumers.
Currently, there is no way to fully realize the potential long-term uses for XML syndication feeds in Internet advertising. For example, there are insufficient means to integrate XML syndication feeds with Internet advertising to dynamically deliver a more content rich experience to consumers.